Bernardo Villela is like a mallrat except at the movies. He is a writer, director, editor and film enthusiast who seeks to continue to explore and learn about cinema, chronicle the journey and share his findings.

Day: September 19, 2014

This is a post that is a repurposing of an old-school Mini-Review Round-Up post. As stated here I am essentially done with running multi-film review posts. Each film deserves its own review. Therefore I will repost, and at times add to, old reviews periodically. Enjoy!

In Their Skin

If there’s one thing that’s plainly easy to appreciate about In Their Skin is that its a very well regimented film, that through its structuring not only easily raises the stakes, but also slowly and surely disturbs and unnerves. It’s the kind of film that remembers that the most frightening concepts are those that hit closest to home and seem most plausible. It gives you some answers, the ones you need, but not all or more than necessary.

Through its traversing and escalating in tone it also allows each of the actors involved to give fairly layered performances. Much of the first act the family at the core of the drama is disconnected and distant. Then upon meeting their offbeat neighbors there is an extended period of awkwardness before things escalate.

There is a fearless approach to some of the sound design and scoring choices later on in the film, which is great. In fact, the only major quibble I really have with it, aside from some stock horror film brain-farting by the protagonists, is that the denouement feels more like a flopping thud than the breath of fresh air it should feel like. There’s a bit of a disconnect between that and what passed before that robs the film of a bit of the potency it had built up.